#josephlai

Before this month’s Video Vortex, I had only seen one other Godfrey Ho film, 1993’s Undefeatable, starring Cynthia Rothrock. While that film has its quirks, most notably the batshit insane death of its lead villain, it is mostly a fairly by the numbers kung-fu revenge movie, featuring some very impressive stunt work. Little did I know the history and filmmaking style of Godfrey Ho, which I will recount here very quickly, because it is important to understand why Ninja Terminator is such a lysergic cinematic experience.

Godfrey Ho got his start as a first assistant director for Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers productions. Eventually, he realized that there was a thirst for Hong Kong cinema in the international film market, so he decided to take advantage of that in a very, shall we say, idiosyncratic way. After forming IFD Films & Arts with producer Joseph Lai and a mysterious figure named Tomas Tang (who allegedly died in a fire in the mid-90s, but some believe was secretly Godfrey Ho himself), Ho set about flooding the international film market with no-budget action films, most of which included the word “ninja” in the title. In a ten year period, Ho made roughly 115 films, making him perhaps the most prolific director in all of weirdo cinema. How did he do this? Well, he kinda cheated.

Here’s how a typical Godfrey Ho ninja film came together: Ho would shoot a few minutes of footage featuring caucasian actors in ninja outfits, because caucasian actors meant bigger box office. He would then take an entirely different movie that had been bought by IFD Films & Arts, usually of Korean or Filipino origin, and edit in footage from that film to go alongside his caucasian ninjas, overdub all of the dialogue in English, and try to construct a coherent narrative out of all of these disparate parts. The same footage would get reused over and over again in different iterations for different films, an actor could work with Godfrey Ho once, and end up appearing in twenty of his films. Ho also loved to use unlicensed music; in Ninja Terminator, you can hear snippets of tunes from Pink Floyd and the Star Wars soundtrack, amongst others. The effect of this audacious Frankenstein cinema on your brain is like looking at one of those optical illusion paintings from the nineties: you know that there’s an image in there somewhere, but your brain has to adjust to it.

Apparently Ninja Terminator is one of Ho’s more successful efforts in splicing together what could be called a linear story, which, holy shit, if THIS is an example of a SUCCESSFUL attempt, I can’t wait to see what an abject failure looks like.

So at this point you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been stalling a bit. That’s because, once again, this movie is almost impossible to describe. But I’ll try: there are these three ninjas, two are honkeys, one is “Japanese.” Their master is like, yo, check it out, I’ve got the golden ninja warrior statue, which makes me impervious to harm. The ninjas decide that the statue turns people corrupt and evil, for some reason, so they each escape from the dojo with a piece: each honkey gets an arm, and the “Japanese” guy gets the body, I believe. Some other ninjas try to fight them, but they manage to beat them. Suddenly there’s a two year time jump. The evil ninjas find the “Japanese” ninja and kill him. This leads our head honkey, played by Ho mainstay Richard Harrison, to bring in his right hand man, Jaguar Wong, to protect the dead ninja’s sister, and make sure that the golden ninja warrior doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Of course, Richard Harrison and Jaguar Wong never meet in person, because Jaguar Wong’s scenes were taken from a Korean drama called The Uninvited Guest.

Now is a good time to discuss some of the film’s…peculiarities. Apparently Ho heard that Garfield (yes, the cat) was very popular in America, so he decided to have Richard Harrison’s character, a middle aged man, discuss business on a Garfield telephone. Needless to say, the entire audience cheered in delighted disbelief the first time this phone appeared. Also, for some reason, whenever Richard Harrison and the other honkey are in their ninja outfits, they also have on a bunch of eyeliner, as if it’s 2004 and they’re going to a My Chemical Romance concert. Then there is the main villain of the film, Tiger Shen. There’s really no easy way to put this, so I’ll just say it. For most of the movie, for no discernible reason, this dude wears a woman’s blonde wig. Like a Gidget, beach blanket bingo wig. It’s hypnotically bizarre. And don’t even get me started on the toy robots that deliver ransom notes and hostage video tapes, because then we’d be here all day.

Basically, the entire film from hereon in is fight scenes. There is a new fight scene roughly every minute or so, which is so over the top and ill-advised, but somehow kinda works. Like, a horror movie with a fresh kill every minute would become tedious, but for some reason, Ho’s unapologetically maximalist take on the kung-fu movie is fascinating to me. Jaguar Wong cannot go anywhere in this movie without a bunch of dudes challenging him to a fight for no reason. And surprise surprise, he always wipes the floor with them. The fight scenes also feature a ton of weird stylistic flourishes, including instant repeats and freeze frames. Oh, and if you zoned out during a fight the first time around, don’t worry, odds are it will get repeated later on in the movie.

Along the way, Richard Harrison chops up a watermelon with a katana, we learn that ninjas can teleport…somehow, some crabs attack Richard Harrison’s wife, who works as a fashion designer of some sort and wants to combine swimwear and exercise clothing, there are two surprisingly graphic sex scenes involving a gangster moll who used to be Jaguar Wong’s sweetheart, a Korean pawn shop owner speaks with a Texas accent, and there are more double crosses than the goddamn VOID logo.

Eventually, Jaguar Wong and Tiger Shen have an amazing battle that totally ignores the physics of how sand works, and Richard Harrison gets back all the pieces of the golden ninja warrior. The bad ninja master from the beginning commits seppuku by blowing himself up. Freeze frame. End of movie. End of life as you knew it before you watched Ninja Terminator.

I can’t recommend this film highly enough. You almost HAVE to watch it in order to fully understand it, I did my best, but words fail when confronted with the likes of Ninja Terminator. Mad props to Annie Choi of Bleeding Skull for gifting us with this experience, and it was especially neat to finally meet her and chat for a bit after the show. All I can say is, next month’s Video Vortex looks and sounds amazing. For now, though, I must continue my journey into the wild, weird world of Godfrey Ho. There’s Ninja Thunderbolt, Ninja Destroyer, Ninja Dragon, Full Metal Ninja, Ultimate Ninja, Ninja in the Killing Fields…